The music blog echo chamber was full of Big Announcements this week: all the heavy hitters in the biz got together in New York City for the Digital Music Forum East. Is there anything more exciting than a bunch of rich white guys repeating common sense like it’s amazing news? I guess not.

Now, I might be a cynic, but I’m too young to be jaded, and too laid to be grumpy.  A lot of really interesting insights got lost in the mix, and I want to focus on that material for this installation of Weekend Brainfood.  The dinosaurs are finally catching on, but the really valuable stuff came from the upstarts, tech-heads and outsiders. 

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For this weekend’s batch of brainfood, I’m collecting the highlights of three outstanding interviews.  Two of them are very recent, one of them is pretty old—but the common thread here thinking bigger than your competition. This is not a comparison of dick size. 

What I mean is looking further ahead and anticipating how logical future trends will affect your business.  Being on top breeds arrogance, which leads to collapse.  This has been true for every human civilization in history, true for every record label known to mankind, and it probably applies to whoever you’re dating now.  Wait, this is a music blog.

The key to making effective moves is seeing openings that most other folks haven’t read about yet.  I’m not arrogant enough to think any strategy I’ve come up with is “new”—that’s why I decided to run this whole operation open source.  I’m just sharing stolen goods, and here’s the cream of the crop.  I hope you’re enjoying a stoned Sunday, like civilized people.

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Although I’m writing focused articles and working in series format now, I have a lot of business weirdness going on in my life.  I’m still researching the music industry in all directions at once, so this is the first in a regular series of Weekend Brainfood.  These are useful and interesting scraps that don’t belong in any articles (for now) but I still want to share with you. 

I hope this all connects dots, inspires ideas and helps you get work done in 2008.  As always, I appreciate feedback, suggestions, and requests for specific articles. 

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